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Bodywork 8: a few more hours for Bill, a giant leap for me

Note: There is a link at the end of this post to Dante. Don’t miss it if you like to see the process of classic sports car body restoration and construction. Especially not to be missed is the SZ rebody and Aston conversion to a station wagon.

Big happenings at the shop when I arrived today. Bill was in the midst of another afternoon of toil on the SS. Lots more needs doing -rockers repaired, rear end repaired, headlight reattached, seat tracks fabricated etc, but it is looking more like a car that has the potential to get assembled and driven every day. I think I am going to wait until he is done to go nuts with the DA sander and wire wheel cleaning this thing up.

Starting at the end as usual. Here I dropped the pedal box in to see how it would fit. Perfect. My feet now have somewhere to go.

The before shot. A little more grinding and the patch panel can be welded in. Note hood release knob, high beam switch and emergency brake sheath. Sub-frame is in great shape on this car.

The panel from Wolf steel, groomed and ready for installation. Their corner work is a little funky, but it will get the job done. People complain about their panels, but they have worked fine for me and my goals/budget.

Bill in action. The shop was very smoky when I arrived and a lot had been done since my last visit.

Welding in around the transmission hump. Any overlap will be cut away from the bottom and the welds ground down.

Forming the area between the tunnel and the shifter hole. Once the welds are ground down and this is painted it will be clean.

Details of the joints. When this has all been cut out and lost you have to do something -starting from scratch means work.

Another view of the complete new tunnel. There is still some patching in the passenger floor area to do and the fabrication of the seat supports.

This is how it ends up looking after a days struggle. When Bill is done I may give in and get it media blasted. Not sure yet. I also have a bunch of little brackets and stuff to remove, identify and then clean up.

The body gets closer and closer. The shopping list gets shorter and shorter. The money set aside for this gets less and less. I think the most important thing right now is to get the body in a usable state. If I run out of money I can put it together and drive it around in primer for a while. Someday I may regret not having Dante fix it, but for now this is fine with me. Good job Bill. Only visit Dante if you have some time to spend -the Gullwing and Aston conversion are not to be missed.